Bing Crosby made his Blu-ray debut in 2010 with “White Christmas” but it’s been nearly a two-year wait for another high-definition helping of Der Bingle (not including his guest appearance in “That’s Entertainment!”). You might expect the encore to be Crosby’s other holiday chesnut, “Holiday Inn” or perhaps “High Society,” whose VistaVisioned views of Newport would sure make one snazzy looking Blu-ray. Instead, there’s the surprise appearance of Crosby’s last starring vehicle, “High Time” (1960), not exactly a TV staple; as far as I can tell, it’s never even been available on VHS.

Thanks for this utterly out-of-the-box (but delightful) choice goes to Nick Redman and Brian Jameson, the music and movie aficinados who have curated the invaluable niche label Twilight Time to release deep catalogue titles on Blu-ray in limited editions of 3000 copies (available through the Screen Archives Entertainment website). Each month, they release a title apiece from Sony and Fox, and they usually look and sound at least as good as pretty much anything out there. The Sonys tend to be higher profile, titles that were prepared for retail release — the much-beloved “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Steel Magnolia” and “As Good as It Gets” — but Sony has decided to effectively test market through Twilight Time. The Fox titles, more closely hand-picked by Nick and Brian, tend to be a mixture of titles that proved themselves on VHS (“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” which recently sold out, and the wonderful “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines,” a 70mm title that looks spectacular) as well as more obscure gems that were never on video like “The Wayward Bus,” a John Steinbeck adaptation starring Joan Collins and Jayne Mansfield that Fox didn’t put into either star’s box set back in the heyday of deep-catalogue DVD.

After Crosby ended his quarter-century association with Paramount with his second version of “Anything Goes” (1956), he freelanced, making deals through his Bing Crosby Productions with MGM for “High Society” and the not-on-DVD drama “Man on Fire.” BCP then inked a two-picture deal with Fox that initially resulted in Frank Tashlin’s “Say One For Me” (1960) a full-scale musical with Debbie Reynolds listed in Harry Medved and Randy Lowell’s “The 50 Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way).” (I’d still like to finally see it, if for no other reason that Crosby’s show-biz priest seems to be ministering at a fictional version of St. Malachy’s Actor’s Chapel on W. 50th Street, which I often pass on the way to work). The second film was “High Time,” a comedy with a couple of songs directed with no small amount of panache by Blake Edwards between a couple of certifiable classics “Operation Petticoat” (1959) and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961).

Thanks to Edwards’ skill with sight gags and slapstick as well as his 55-year-old star’s laid back charm and comic chops, “High Time” is a chuckle-filled charmer that’s aged becomingly — for me, it plays now better now then when I first caught it on “ABC Sunday Night at the Movies” back in the 1960s. And no, the title doesn’t refer to put — that arrived on college campuses a few years later, roughly when I did. Crosby plays the wealthy widowed owner of a restaurant chain who decides to belatedly begin his college education, much to the horror of his spoiled adult children. Enrolling at a ficticious North Carolina university, Bing insists on sharing a freshman dorm with singer Fabian (second billed with not much to do — he doesn’t even have a solo number –after his starring debut in Don Siegel’s long-unseen “Hound Dog Man”), frequently shirtless Richard Beymer, and Patrick Adiarte, a Filipino actor playing a surprisingly unstereotypical (this is Edwards after all) Indian exchange student. Tuesday Weld, moonlighting from her first and only season as the immortal Thalia Menninger on TV’s “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” serves as sort of a communal (if technially virginal) girlfriend who flits among the three younger guys as the story follows Crosby’s all four years of college. Der Bingle’s love interest is French professor Nicole Maurey, an appealing actress of a certain age who had appeared opposite Crosby in George Seaton’s undeservedly forgotten “Little Boy Lost” (1953). The comic heavy lifting is performed by a young Gavin McLeod as a chemistry professor.

Crosby shows off still-impressive pipes by singing his only solo number — he joins in on a couple of other group sings, including a Christmas carol — to Maurey, introducing Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen’s Oscar-nominated “The Second Time Around” (which Fox would use as the title of a Debbie Reynolds-Andy Griffith comedy the following year). Middle aged or not, he also shows off considerable comic skill and shows himself to be a very good sports, especially in a lengthy, and very funny, sequence where he’s required to cavort in drag (looking astonishingly like Mildred Natwick!) and dancing with Douglas Dumbrille! for a fraternity initation. (He also climbs a bonfire tower and does 10 consecutive chin-ups, with the help of a few editing tricks). The first of many Henry Manicini scores for Edwards (they had previously worked together on TV’s “Peter Gunn”) is offered as an isolated track. As Julie Kirgo’s excellent notes point out, “High Time” also offers some of the most inventive wipes of any film from this era. She also points out that his ancestor of Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School” (both had a forgotten forebear in 1935’s “Old Man Rhythm” with George Barbier) was originally intended for Gary Cooper before his fatal illness, though it is very hard indeed to imagine Gary Cooper in a dress.

Crosby had just one more starring role, an unfortunate reunion with Bob Hope in “The Road to Hong Kong” (1962), and aside from a couple of supporting roles focused on TV for the rest of his career. His production company, founded for “The Great John L,” was one of the more active actor shingles in both TV and features, with later credits including “Willard” (1971), the “Walking Tall” trilogy and its final effort, “The Great Santini,” released in 1979, two years after its namesake’s death. “High Time” may not be as well known, but it sure goes down smooth, a time capsule of Hollywood’s Deluxe Colored fantasies about the late 1950s with some eye-popping art direction.

Michael Gordon’s “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” (1951) headlines the Sept. 11 releases from the Fox Cinema Archives manufacture-on-demand program. I’ve never seen this Seventh Avenue drama starring Susan Hayward, Dan Dailey, Sam Jaffe and George Sanders (shown on TV back in the day, for some reason, as “Only the Best”) but my pal Farran Smith Nehme has, and she’s very bullish on it.

The Warner Archive Collection seems to be taking a break for new releases today. But it is taking pre-orders for a pair of Bette Davis titles out Sept,. 25: Irving Rapper’s “The Corn is Green” (1946) with John Dall; and John Francis Dillon’s “The Big Shakedown” (1934) with a pre-stardom Bette billed beneath Charles Farrell, as her druggist boyfriend, but above Ricardo Cortez as a gangster who shakes them down.